There’s an excellent primer on California’s extensive and complicated water system by Chris Austin here. The bottom line is that there’s a colossal mismatch among California’s economy, its population center, and its water.
Southern California gets most of its water from three sources: the State Water Project that transports water from the Lake Oroville reservoir (where the dramatic videos of spillway collapse are coming from) all over the state including the Bay Area and Southern California, the Colorado River aqueduct that transports water from Lake Havasu to Lake Mathews near Riverside, and the Los Angeles Aqueduct that transports water from Mono Lake up by Yosemite to the Cascades facility in Sylmar. These aqueducts vary in age from about a century to 40 years. That maintenance is long overdue should come as no surprise.
Yep, water is everything in the western US. We even have our own water law in the west (based on prior appropriation doctrine).
One of the issues I’ve followed since I was a kid is Colorado River water. There was a compact between the states on water allocation and use, but the assumptions written into it were not correct – the averages were taken from a series of wet years so the water is over-allocated. Part of the reason the river barely (or never) reaches the ocean.
Have you read Cadillac Desert? Guaranteed to get your blood boiling.
I have several problems with the Colorado River Compact. As you note it made bad assumptions, divvying up about 20% more water than is actually available among seven western states, but even worse is that it is too America-centric. The Colorado River basin includes parts of Mexico, too, and Mexico’s needs weren’t taken into account in the compact.
Ever since I can remember there has been a big contentious divide between northern and southern CA regarding water. The southern portion is consumed by development, always requiring more water – water which has to come from the north.
A big force, though, throughout CA has been the impact of environmental groups. They don’t want more dams, whereas we could store the overflow seen today for the dry years ahead of us. Supposedly, these same groups, 10 some years ago, red-flagged the Oroville Dam as needing repairs. But, at the same time opposed doing these repairs, buttressing the overflow areas with concrete, because of it’s adverse effect to the environment. These same groups are behind saving the Delta Smelt, favoring this small fish over being able to pump more water into the fields, helping central valley agriculture.
BTW, just as an example of the magnitude of wasted water, released from the Oroville Dam initially. — in the first .44 day, enough water flowed out of the dam that could have supplied the entire county of Los Angeles for 1 year!!! That’s sheer goverment stupidity – a government who continues to be h*ll bent in continuing it’s water restrictions program.
I see it a little differently, Jan. I think that given California’s unique hydrology and distribution of population, that the state doesn’t devote a lot more attention to its water distribution infrastructure is baffling.
My posts above addressed some of CA’s overindulgence in what I see as excessive environmental demands negatively effecting our water issues. However, the lack of meaningfully addressing the N/S unfair water allocations, as well as providing necessary infrastructure to see us through years of drought, is high up on my list of defective water policies in CA.